


Mother, Mother, Could You Bless His Soul?

by redtailedhawk90



Category: The Room Where It Happened (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, superhero au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-05
Updated: 2019-03-05
Packaged: 2019-11-12 11:09:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18009812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redtailedhawk90/pseuds/redtailedhawk90
Summary: Seshmir worries about this kid running around Luume, playing vigilante.  One day, the Blue Darter is going to get himself into more trouble than he can get himself out of.





	Mother, Mother, Could You Bless His Soul?

Seshmir wakes suddenly in the middle of the night.  He keeps his eyes closed and his breathing deep as he takes stock of his room.  It wouldn’t be the first time someone decided to rid themselves of some trouble by ambushing him in the night, and it wouldn’t do to give up the element of surprise.  

His sheets are crumpled at the end of the bed and he’s still wearing his suit.  There’s a pile of papers on his chest, unmoved, so he can’t have been asleep for long.  Everything else in his room seems still and quiet. The light on his nightstand glows soft and yellow through his eyelids, and he can’t see any shadows lurking above him, so finally he opens his eyes.  As if on cue, he hears again the noise that initially woke him.

_Thump. Thump. Thwack. CRASH!_

There’s a long, uncontrolled moan, like a wounded animal, but the tone of the voice tickles the back of Seshmir’s mind.

_Tseer?_

Still groggy, he rolls out of bed.  He grabs his head-knocker just in case and inches over to the doorway.  There’s a dark lump in the middle of his office. Seshmir can just barely make out the shape of a head and torso, and an enormous pair of wings.

“Tseer!”  He fumbles for the light switch, dropping the head-knocker.  “Are you okay? What happened?”

His hands are shaking with the sudden rush of adrenaline, but he manages to find the switch.  Blinking as his eyes adjust, he drops to the aarakocra’s side, only to come up short. The person in his living room is an aarakocra, but their feathers are midnight blue, not grey, and their eyes--wide, unfocused, rolling in their sockets--are bright yellow, not the fiery red he is accustomed to.  

They’re also wearing a mask.

“Blue Darter?”  Seshmir flails his hands a little, unsure of what to do.  He takes a hurried stock of injuries: the front of the Darter’s uniform is wet and torn, soaked through from a nasty wound in his side; his mask is in a similar state from what must have been a sharp crack to the head; his arm sits at an unnatural angle, rapidly turning purple; and more than a few of his feathers are scorched.  His breathing is fast, panicked, and whistles out of his beak. He groans again, head lolling, and his eyes close.

The sound kicks Seshmir into action.  He pulls the aarakocra into his arms as gently as he can--Nameless help him, he’s so _small_ , how can he possibly be so _small_?--and moves him to the couch against the wall.  Then he sets a kettle to boiling, dropping his set of sewing needles into the water to sterilize.  It’s a practiced routine that sets him more at ease: boil the water, sterilize equipment, gather clean towels, clean the wound.  He’s had to go through these motions often enough, between his and Otto’s penchant for making enemies.

When he comes back into the office with an armful of towels and a pair of scissors, the Darter is awake again, but still doesn’t seem aware of his surroundings.  He babbles something about a Phoenix and a Heart, none of it making any sense. Seshmir makes soothing sounds as he cuts the Darter’s uniform from his body, peeling it off his feathers.  He goes to do the same to the mask, so that he can get to the wound there, but the aarakocra’s talons are around his wrist before he can even touch the fabric.

“No,” says the Darter with sudden, perfect lucidity.  “The mask stays.”

Seshmir grumbles, but the Darter tightens his grip on his wrists, his yellow eyes seeming to pierce straight through Seshmir’s soul, until Seshmir nods.  The aarakocra closes his eyes again, exhausted from the effort. Just then, the kettle announces that it’s done, so Seshmir fetches it and carefully sets the needles aside for a moment while he cleans the wounds he can see with the hot water.  He has to scrub harder than he’d like in order to remove the dirt and grit from the gash on the Darter’s stomach, but if he could feel it, he doesn’t object. He also pulls some of the midnight-blue feathers from the skin around the wound so that he has a clean area to work with, tossing them to the side with little ceremony.

The action reminds Seshmir of plucking a chicken to cook it, and he has to swallow back the bile that rises in his throat.

Working with quick, efficient stitches, Seshmir closes the wound and layers clean gauze on top of it, holding it in place with a cloth bandage from his stash.  The broken arm gives him more pause, but he decides leaving it unset will cause more problems later, so he nudges the Darter’s shoulder.

“Mmmnnhh?” One eye opens, and Seshmir watches as the pupil dilates and contracts, trying to focus on his face.

“I need to set your arm,” says Seshmir.  “It’s going to hurt.”

“Mmmmmmmk,” replies the Darter, eye sliding back closed.  

Seshmir grimaces and grabs the Darter’s talon, bracing his foot against the aarakocra’s shoulder.  With firm, steady pressure, he begins to pull. The Darter shrieks, his beak clenched tight against the noise, but Seshmir persists until he finally feels the bone click back into place.  The sound of the aarakocra’s scream echoes off the walls of the apartment for a moment, only to be replaced with heavy breathing as the two of them both catch their breath. Seshmir lashes two wooden dowels to the talon as tight as he can, to keep it from coming unset again.

Sitting back on his heels, he heaves out a breath.  The Darter seemed to have fallen asleep again, so Seshmir throws a blanket over him and lets him rest.  Then he stumbles over to the other couch and collapses into it face-first, unconscious before he even stops falling.

He has no idea how much time has passed when he wakes again to someone shaking him.  

“Seshmir, wake up!” The Darter is leaning over him, broken arm pressed tight to the wound on his side.  “They’re here.”

Seshmir jumps to his feet and grabs his head-knocker from where he’d dropped it in the doorway to his bedroom.  “Who’s here? How many?”

“Two, I think.  Bad guys. They’ll be looking for me.”  He wavers on his feet, listing to one side.  Seshmir watches him out of the corner of his eye.

“You need to sit down,” he says.  “I’ll take care of this.” The Darter tries to protest, but Seshmir grabs him firmly by his good elbow and leads him into the bedroom, sitting him in a chair just as a knock sounds at the door.

Seshmir switches his head-knocker to his left hand, checks that the chain is still on the door, and opens it a crack, blocking the view into his apartment with his body.  Standing on the other side is a tiefling and a human, both dressed in uniforms that identified them as cops.

“Good evening, sir,” says the human.  “We’re terribly sorry to bother you so late, but it’s very important.  There’s a fugitive on the loose in the area, and we’ve received some intel that he came into this building.”

“Oh?” says Seshmir, affecting concern.  “Is he dangerous? Should I worry?”

“He’s _extremely_ dangerous,” the tiefling says.  “But don’t worry, sir, we’ll catch him.  We just need to know if you’ve seen anything suspicious.”  Their eyes drift down to Seshmir’s chest, which he realizes too late is covered in blood.  They raise an eyebrow at him and suck in a breath through their teeth. “Oh no, are you all right?” they ask, but the intonation is wrong.

“Oh, you know.”  Seshmir shrugs. “The life of a private detective.”  He keeps his tone light, joking, and thanks the Nameless Mother that he is a dragonborn with a hard-to-read face.  “I’m sorry to say I haven’t seen anything out of the ordinary, officers. So you’ll have to excuse me. I have an early day tomorrow.”  He begins to close the door.

“Of course.”  The human lays a hand on the tiefling’s arm.  “You let us know if you notice anything.”

“Will do.”  The door clicks shut.

From the other room, the Darter calls softly, “They didn’t believe you.”

“Nope,” says Seshmir.  He switches his head knocker to his good hand again and readies an Eldritch Blast in the other.  Then he counts to three and opens the door.

The tiefling, boot raised to kick it in, stumbles forward.  Seshmir swings the head-knocker, hitting them solidly in the nose with a sickening crunch, and shoots his free hand out.  Crackling blue energy erupts from his palm and thunders into the chest of the human. The tiefling straightens up, blood pouring from their broken face.  Lashing out, they try to tackle him to the ground, but he steps deftly out of their way, delivering another blow to the back of their head as they move past.  They crumple to the ground, unmoving.

The human is in the hallway, coughing up blood.  Seshmir grabs them by the front of their shirt and pulls them into the apartment, closing the door behind them as he does.  No need for anyone else to get involved. The human grabs weakly at his claws, but he ignores them, instead dragging them bodily over to the window on the far wall.  It’s still open from when the Darter snuck in earlier that night, and without hesitation, Seshmir pushes the human through it. There’s a brief yell, and then a crash, and then silence.  

Going back over to the tiefling, Seshmir repeats the process.  Only once both the attackers have landed in the alleyway below and the window is closed again does he breathe a sigh of relief.  He leans against the window, head back, eyes closed, and tries to get his heart rate back to normal.

“You didn’t have to do that.”  The Darter is standing in the bedroom doorway, looking at him strangely.  He’s affecting that fake deep voice again, the one he always uses when he speaks to the public, and Seshmir finds himself rolling his eyes.

“Oh yeah, of course not,” he says.  “I should have just handed over a half-dead kid to a couple of thugs who definitely looked like they were sent to finish the job.”

The Darter looks down at the ground.  Sheepish? Apologetic? It was impossible to tell with the mask.  “Did you kill them?”

Seshmir lifts one shoulder and drops it.  “There’s a dumpster in the alley below. They’ll live.  Probably.” He waves a claw in the air. “It doesn’t really matter.  Look, you need to get back to resting.”

“I’m fine, really,” the Darter says, and makes for the window, but he only gets two steps before he’s stumbling again.  Seshmir catches him and scoops him up, placing him back on the couch. “I’m not a kid,” he grumbles as Seshmir tucks the blanket around him.

“Uh huh,” says Seshmir.  “And I’m a flying monkey.”  He shakes his head. The Darter yawns despite himself and he chuckles.  “Do your parents even know you’re out here, doing this?”

“I don’t have parents,” the aarakocra mumbles.  He nuzzles into the arm of the couch and is asleep before Seshmir can work up to a retort.

Seshmir settles back onto the other couch, cursing.  “What the fuck am I going to do with you, kid?” he whispers to the still apartment.  He tries to stay awake, to keep watch, but before he knows it sunlight is pouring through the open window and the couch across from him is empty.  Sighing, he sets about cleaning up the mess from the previous night. He folds the towels, Prestidigitates away all the blood, and picks up the stray feathers that litter the floor.

Except the feathers aren’t blue anymore.

They’re grey.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you [Kales](http://archiveofourown.org/users/citadelofswords) for starting this AU! You can check out the drabble they wrote that started all this [here](https://paradoxicalrenegade.dreamwidth.org/3403.html).


End file.
